


Winter Queen

by Jo Lasalle (Jo_Lasalle)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-14
Updated: 2005-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_Lasalle/pseuds/Jo%20Lasalle
Summary: This story is set after the first season and was written before the second season started airing.(Part of a number of stories re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones! I tried to time a bulk upload so nobody got 10 separate notifications, but if I did accidentally spam people, my apologies!)
Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Laura Roslin





	Winter Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones.

  
She likes to sit with her feet bare, shifting through the grass. Today's weather, every day's weather, is just right for sitting idle. Her dark suit is gathering warmth from the sunlight, bright but always pleasant, the air that much fresher for the scent of perpetual spring.

Underneath it's still steel and space engineering, prettified, but as far as metal containers go, it doesn't come much better, and she appreciates the courtesy. She appreciates her room, which is small but has a door. She appreciates the sunlight and the grass, and if the wide berth people give her leaves her as lonely as before, at least it is good motivation to keep it together, and she appreciates that, too.

Unpresidential, she stretches her arms over the back of the bench and slides down a little, the grass tickling her heels.

Six months of this, unless the Cylons kill them first; it could be worse, she thinks. She can do that, but there's a sudden weight on her chest and she stops that train of thought. Sits up straight again, wipes her hands on her trousers.

That's a problem when she's alone like this, when it's harder to be someone who stands her ground, keeps her calm, finds the right words.

Not that she faces crises anymore. No decisions on the edge, this or that, either or. She's made those, and now she's sitting on a bench with her feet in the grass and six months to live. No turning points, just a slow, fraying road.

The doors of the conference centre open. She makes a point of not being startled, waiting a beat before she turns to look, but then she recognises Lee Adama and feels her stomach drop. She has statements for the public, should they want them, but nothing for him.

She considers smiling but fears it will go wrong, so she just waits while he comes up the sandy path, meeting her eyes until he stops in front of the bench, at the edge of the lawn. She has to look up into the light to see him.

"Madam President," he says, and his face so earnest that she knows he's thought about this, how he believes that she's still entitled to the form of address. From him it doesn't sound like mockery.

"Captain Apollo," she says, and a smile steals into her voice after all. "How are you doing?"

He cocks his head, and his mouth twists a little. "It's Lieutenant now, actually." Her eyes drop to his insignia -- stupid, so stupid, she really knows nothing about the military -- and then she looks to the ground. His boot is tapping against the stone margin of the path. "Doesn't have the same ring to it, I suppose."

She blinks, and wills away the need for meaningless apologies. This isn't the time. "You've been demoted?"

"There had to be some reaction." He shrugs. "It doesn't matter." And he seems to mean it; he's right, of course. Career opportunities aren't a priority anymore.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. "You're not here on a break, are you?"

"Not exactly," he says. "I'm here for your security. Checking out your room, the other passengers. See if there's anyone around who might carry a grudge." He meets her eyes, at ease with being here. At every turn he's been there, and now he's looking out for her on the last stretch as if there hadn't been guns and handcuffs.

"And?" she asks, hearing the other question in her voice.

"No," he says evenly. "No one I can see."

She nods once, almost curt. Then she takes her shoes in one hand and stands. "I was going to walk a few steps," she says, and he falls in beside her on the sand, her on the grass.

She takes him on her round, a circle she walks once a day, no more; she prefers not to give the impression that she's pacing. "How's your father?"

"Unchanged." Stable, but unconscious. William Adama hasn't regained consciousness since the shooting. Strangely, unbelievably, the fleet kept functioning and the Cylons didn't attack, and by now the thought of Adama in intensive care fills her with sadness, but not the blind fear that this will be their unravelling.

She directs Lee to take a left turn at the end of the lane. "It must be hard for you, back on _Galactica_."

Lee doesn't stop, he doesn't tense. His voice carries no boldness, just a statement of fact. "I stand by what I did."

Of course he does. No surprise there except how much she hurts for him, alone on his father's ship, a mutineer to everyone's wounded hero. She stops and looks at him, and then she can't help a strange feeling of pride because she _knew_ this. "I believe that."

For a moment he hesitates, but then he accepts it with a tiny smile.

It's him who puts them in motion again, a subtle move forward that lets her take the lead.

"What about you?" he asks after a while. "What about Baltar?" He doesn't say that with the respect due a president, but she squashes that prickle of satisfaction. She likes to think it was never about ego, and it shouldn't be now, either.

"So far he hasn't done anything to deserve my doubts," she says, and when he shoots her a look she adds, "As the President."

He doesn't comment. They're getting to the end of her round, and she wonders how much his responsibilities have changed if he has the time to keep her company like this.

"What are you going to do here?" he asks.

She frowns. "Oh, there has to be some way I can make myself useful."

He walks her back to where they started. Then he says, "I have to go. They're waiting for me at the shuttle."

"Of course. And thank you."

"It's my job."

"Not all of it." She tries a smile, and he looks down again. "Thank you for coming to see me," she says, and if that reflects her fall she doesn't care.

Meeting her eyes, he shakes his head, with what looks like deliberation. "Not at all."

She nods, like she would have at the end of a meeting, president to adviser, letting him go, watching him until he's gone inside.

She sits back down on the bench.

~*~*~*

A Raptor comes to pick her up for her appointment with the doctor. Just her, a mere day after she's made the request to Cloud 9's captain. She still has privileges; her dying is treated with courtesy and discretion.

"So, you're going to put yourself in the tender care of the doc?" the young man in the pilot's uniform says as he offers her his hand for the last step up the ladder and through the Raptor's hatch. Then he seems to realise what that could imply, and he looks her up and down in such a nervous way that she is amused despite the circumstances. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

"Just allergies," she reassures him. "You're the pilot?"

"No, I'm the ECO. I'm Karl. Lieutenant Agathon." The name sounds familiar, but she can't place it right away.

"I'm Laura," she says. "Thank you for the lift, anyway."

"Not a problem." He folds down a seat for her, and he's helping her slip into the seatbelt when a young woman hops aboard and pushes the lever to close the hatch.

"Ma'am," she says as she walks around Lieutenant Agathon, her eye contact with Laura brief and nervous. "You all set, Helo?" she calls out, dropping into the pilot's seat and putting on her helmet.

Laura meets Agathon's friendly smile and the penny drops. He leaves the helmet off when he sits down at his station. "Make it a nice one, Skips. Let's not shake the lady around too much," he says with a smile over his shoulder.

The pilot, who knows who she is, says nothing. Laura cannot judge if a special effort is made, but their departure from Cloud 9's docking bay is nice and smooth. She lets go of the sides of her seat once they're in open space, and since Lieutenant Agathon doesn't look frantically busy she asks, "Helo is your call sign?"

"Yes. Now don't tell me it sounds funny," he replies with a mock threat in his voice. "Because it could have been a whole lot worse."

"You're the young man who came back from Caprica."

The pause isn't long, but telling. "Yes," he says, slowly. "I didn't see any other survivors, though."

Of course, he must have got that question hundreds of times. "I didn't have any family on Caprica."

"Right. It's just, most people ask me, and there's really nothing to say. " He shrugs.

"Yes." Laura catches the pilot trying to turn her head, but then they're approaching _Galactica_ 's landing bay and she has to focus. "Good thing you found your way back," Laura says to Helo.

"Yeah, I was really lucky." He's monitoring his station, but there doesn't seem to be much to do for the ECO. "So, is there pollen on Cloud 9?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your allergies. People are always talking about the gardens on the luxury liners. I've never been to one of them. But I always had bad symptoms in spring, before I went into space."

"It's food allergies," she says. "I can't eat the preserve rations."

That makes him laugh. "I don't blame you. But they got plants there, right?"

"Yes, there's a garden. Trees and grass and flowers and everything, except on a spaceship."

He looks over his shoulder to give her a smile. "Must be nice."

She smiles back. "It is."

"I wouldn't mind seeing it," he says, facing the console again. "Though people say it's a waste, we should grow food instead."

"I heard." At some point even a coup is old news, and there's only so much you can speculate on the Commander's condition. The comforts of the powerful have fast become a popular subject.

They're approaching _Galactica_. The pilot once again tries to catch Lieutenant Agathon's eye, but she can't be subtle about it with her helmet and she gives up.

"So what is it you do, Laura?"

The landing bay is vast before them. It used to look this huge even from Colonial One. "I'm a teacher," she says.

"Cool," he says. "That's important, teaching."

The pilot calls back, "Patch me through to the LSO, Helo, it looks like they've moved us up a slot."

"Will do," Agathon answers, and to Laura he says, "At least that's a useful job you've got. Imagine being stuck in the fleet as an insurance salesman."

"Or a travel agent."

He turns his head, grinning, and then they approach the landing pad and Lieutenant Agathon has a job to do.

They set down with a heavy jolt, and then there's silence as they are lowered into _Galactica_ 's atmosphere. Laura would not haven chosen to be back on this ship, and she wishes Lieutenant Agathon would talk a bit more about trees and insurance salesmen, but she knows nothing about the military and how hard he has to concentrate, so she holds on to her seat and her calm and keeps silent.

"Right, we're clear for exit," the pilot finally says and Lieutenant Agathon unbuckles his seatbelt and goes to open the hatch.

"Here we are," he says, helping Laura up. She's wobbly in the knees, climbing down that ladder, and weirdly the feeling remains once she's standing on the _Galactica_ 's very solid steel deck.

She can't say she misses the honour guard, and she realises she half-expected there to be guards of a different kind. But it's Lee who's waiting for her by the Raptor, exchanging nods with Agathon and the pilot.

She wants to address him but trips over his new rank. He doesn't ask her about her flight. They're on his father's ship and he's her guard, one way or the other, and eventually he says, "This way, Madam President," and beckons her to the door.

She knows the way to sickbay, but he walks with her anyway, impassive to the stares and the awkward looking-without-looking. Neither of them speaks. There's no need. She is his statement. He stands by what he did.

The news the doc has for her is that there is no news. Hours of mental exercise have prepared her for worse, so disappointment is out of place. He talks to her about treatment she doesn't want and she says she'll think about it, which is true. No way she won't. She tucks her cold feet under the examination bed, accepting the lecture and the smoke, and tries not to wonder where Adama is. She hasn't tried to come see him. It's wrong to her, the idea of standing over his unconscious body. But he's around here somewhere.

Lee is waiting in the corridor, leaning against the wall with his eyes on the floor and his jaw set. Just outside of sickbay, and he's stayed here the entire time, just outside the open door. This isn't a statement anymore, or about principle, about her. He wouldn't look like this, he wouldn't make her want to tell him comforting lies.

"I'm done here," she says, and he looks up.

He's thinking about how to ask, though she wishes he wouldn't at all. "Any news?"

She shakes her head. "No."

There's nothing to say on the way to the hangar deck, except when they stop at the head of the Raptor and there's no proper procedure anymore to her departure, which she expects will make him uncomfortable.

She falls back on, "Goodbye," and suddenly he smiles like he knows what she's been thinking.

"I'll see you around," he says, surprising her.

Lieutenant Agathon and his pilot will take her back to Cloud 9. She'll be glad to be off this ship, and leaving quietly, no fuss, going home from a visit to the doctor.

Agathon helps her aboard, then puts on his helmet. Someone has clued him in, though, since he's not flirting with her anymore. You don't flirt with the exiled.

~*~*~*

They tear up the lawns three weeks after the coup. Baltar knows the game better than she gave him credit for.

She keeps her shoes on for her walk along the remainder of the path, a tilted circle around the conference complex. It's early evening, but with the construction work going on, there's none of the make-belief of fading light, which plays with her sense of time.

She eats dinner at her usual table, a bland but sustaining fare. The crops will make no difference to their supply situation; she saw numbers in her day, she's seen yield estimates for those poor shallow patches of green, and she sees the amounts handed out on Cloud 9 alone at every single meal.

Conscientiously, she eats almost everything on her plate. There's so much coming and going in the dining hall that nobody pays attention to her.

On the other hand, it could be educational. If there is no Earth for them, it will have to be another colony, and they will need to know about sustaining themselves. The idea of digging around in the ground and explaining the growth cycle of a potato -- and where could she find out about that, anyway? -- isn't the most exciting career prospect, but then she's never liked ancient history and she's taught that at one time or another, too. She'll need different clothes for such a class.

"Is it just me, or has the catering service changed?" It's Lee, with a glass of water in one hand, the other on the back of the opposite chair, and she's surprised and yet not.

"It's not just you," she says, smiling. "What brings you here?"

He looks down at her plate with the three floppy carrots she has left over -- the only thing she has left over, she takes her body seriously now -- and sits down. "The food?"

"I doubt that."

"That's quite a mess out there," he remarks with a side look towards the balcony doors. "I heard the announcement only yesterday; I didn't think they'd be this quick."

"Neither did I," she says with a bit of a sigh.

"It's window dressing."

"Oh, absolutely." She pushes her plate towards the middle of the table, props up her elbows. "It won't make a dent in our supply shortage."

"No, it won't. You couldn't feed Cloud 9 for three weeks with what's going to grow there." His tone is uncharacteristically sharp, and then he looks as if he surprised himself, which makes her smile against her will.

"You really don't like him much, do you?"

"No," he says, but with a twitch to his mouth, sharing the joke. "But I'm not CAG anymore, which means I get out of a lot of the administrative nonsense. I mostly hear about him on the wireless." That makes two of them. Two concerned citizens, talking politics over a drink.

She sips at her own water. "Baltar's not doing too badly," she says, and if that admission was a sore spot at first, she has trained herself out of the sentiment. "The occasional petty vote-garnering gesture aside -- and I can't even blame him for that, if I'm honest."

"Maybe." His profile is sharp as he works out how to phrase what he means. "I was there with you that day, after the attack. I saw you." He meets her eyes and no, she doesn't want to be this moved, this _flattered_ , because she failed three times over and now she's stuck on a cruise ship, thinking about potatoes. "Baltar..." He shrugs, reaching for his water glass without drinking.

She figures that's the point he came to make; there's no other she can see to him coming here. It's not like she maintains a claim on the presidency; she's not that much of a fool and neither is he, so there's no alliance here, nothing to be won by a show of support.

Except she's grateful, and she trusts his judgement, and it's very tempting to cling to him saying she did all right. "I might have done the same," she says.

"Done what?"

"About the flower beds."

Automatically he casts another look out the windows, then looks back at her, and he laughs quietly. "That's possible."

"You don't really believe me, though," she says.

"I don't really care," he corrects, still smiling, saying that she's being silly without so many words. Teasing her, and yet he's serious about this, his faith is in her, not in the office, not _just_ the office.

"What did bring you here?" she asks again, and she thinks her voice is a little rough but not so much that he will notice.

"I was in the neighbourhood," he says, his hand around the water glass but not fiddling with it. Nobody's sat in the opposite chair since this became her table. "It's a shame I missed today's culinary masterpiece."

"Yes, seeing as this is where the rich and powerful come to spend their vacation," she says. It doesn't come out bitter, but he pauses, and she tilts her head and adds, "So don't tell anyone it doesn't live up to expectations, all right?"

"I won't," he says, leaning back in his chair, smiling. "You can count on me."

~*~*~*

She's teaching math when Commander Adama dies. Basic division for the younger children, functions for the older ones. Drawing lines, this much of X results in that much of Y, and her whiteboard marker doesn't break or slip at 10.42.

She has no idea until lunch, when the hush in the dining hall stops her cold. Cylons, she thinks for a second, but there's none of the frenzy she would expect, no panic. Just whispers and ashen faces, and she knows even before she stops a young woman with a brisk, "What happened?"

Adama is dead. Nobody asks what they will do now, because they'll do what they've been doing for the last month. Laura sits, forces down her lunch that tastes of nothing. There's one moment she has to close her eyes, her throat hurting and tight. No particular memory, just the stunned silence of a crowded room and the sadness weighing down on her like it's still all resting on her shoulders and she's out of practice.

The silence is filled by the sound of the wireless, and she hears Baltar, his new statesman voice, talking about sacrifice and endurance and hope. Battered but not broken is his alliteration for the occasion, and we will prevail, and for a split second she forgets her other life and all that she knows, just wants the voice of authority to comfort her, like Adama did that day when he lied about Earth. When they made their pact, that brittle foundation for the season of their reign.

She knows how that went, and she knows how to be the voice of authority. She knows better.

She wishes she had Billy with her.

Afternoon class is a blurry, flighty affair. The children sense something has happened, something bad even if they don't know this Commander who died and don't mourn him. They are distracted and sensitive and her voice trembles when she explains zeros and denominators. A younger boy starts to cry when she corrects his answer.

She sends them home.

The wireless is on in every public space. She dreads the eulogies, no matter if they're in Baltar's false tones or if it's Colonel Tigh, shaken and inelegant, announcing that there'll be a ceremony that night. She dreads the inevitable shift to water consumption and ration cycles that will infuriate her with its triviality. Most of all she doesn't want to hear how her name will sound in this.

She sits in the dining hall with her back straight, accepting the looks that are sent her way. It's a long day but hardly anybody leaves, all those people who didn't even know him, to whom he hadn't been, almost, at a time, maybe, a friend. Must come with being a hero.

The dome is made transparent for the commemoration ceremony, and she watches from inside, through the panoramic windows of the ball room, because the garden is still under construction. Elosha's sermon is on the wireless, another voice she hasn't heard in weeks. Cloud 9 is on the wrong side of _Galactica_ to see much of the fly-by, but she catches a glimpse of the Viper formation as it breaks up over _Galactica_ 's bow. The Vipers look tiny, scrambling in the dark.

Then it's done, and she raises herself out of her chair, both hands on the armrests for support. Her name hasn't come up, and she's not sure her leaving is even noticed.

It's a slow walk down the decks, the long route that lets her take the stairs, and you'd think the ship was empty except for her. The hangar control room staff are the first ones she sees, and they watch her curiously as she leans against a support beam outside the air lock. Nobody comes to ask what she thinks she's doing, so she figures they know who she is.

She hides her hands in her pockets, waiting. Her knees begin to ache from the uncomfortable angle. Then there's lights and movement behind the airlock and beeping from the control room.

It's dark here, towards the end of a day that saw no traffic, they've shut down business and one solitary Viper doesn't warrant daytime lighting. It's a shadowy hangar she steps into once the pressure is there on the other side and the airlock opens.

Lee is still with the Viper, securing his helmet. Deck crew are fixing the Viper's legs to the floor, ignoring her as Lee is ignoring them.

He turns slowly, long after he must have heard her steps. They're both in the shadow of his ship, his face unreadable in the strange light, dark and different, and she's out of words, out of expectation.

She squares her shoulders, and waits. Then his head drops a little and he shifts, defeat settling in his posture, a tightly controlled breath. Lost, he looks lost and beaten, and it's choking off her air. A hundred times worse than if he'd been angry.

"I just keep coming back here," he says, like he's confused, like he wants her to have an answer.

She turns slowly, wanting for words still. He follows her, though on this ship he really doesn't know the way. The stairs again, not the elevator; no pause to their walking and no confined space.

Truthfully, her room isn't much bigger. Small enough to justify that it houses only one person, it's crowded with the two of them. She pulls out the chair from under the desk for him, then slips through between him and the bed to get to the water carafe on the tiny table by the wall.

"Do you want some water?" she asks quietly, because it's the thing to do, something to hold on to, but he shakes his head, and she's not thirsty either. She sits down on the bed, which is the same beige as the wall, and only somewhat lighter than the carpet. No window. At times it's felt too tight, too much of a prison cell, but mostly it's hers, it's safe.

Lee sits with his elbows on his knees, his hair sticking up every which way. In here she can see dark smudges of something on his cheek. Not a bruise. It must be from taking out his Viper.

He gives her a fleeting look, and she sees his eyes are red. "I'd just like to sit here for a bit, if that's all right."

"Of course," she says. "Of course it's all right."

There's only the hum of being deep inside a space ship, surrounding them. "It's a madhouse over there," he says. "Everyone just..." He trails off, unfocused.

"I'm so sorry," she says, the platitude after all, but it's true and it's all she can think of.

"I flew in the formation."

"I was watching." She's watching him now, just as helpless. Lee didn't want a glass of water. When he folds and unfolds his hands in front of himself they're twitchy and shaking, and she finds them clammy when she reaches for him.

"Kara just went all to pieces," he says, gripping her hand hard. She squeezes back, easing the shaking. "I just came back here," he adds, his voice breaking on a lopsided smile.

"That's all right," she says, blinking fast. "I'm glad you did." He shakes his head once, shoulders heaving with a shuddering breath. In her cramped little room she puts a hand on his neck and pulls him in, rests her forehead against his. "I'm glad you did."

~*~*~*

She sits in the gallery, close to the back. It's visible enough. She showed up, she's watching. She's not in a room somewhere, pitying herself.

"It's a clever theory, Mr Zarek, and I'm certainly happy that the twenty years you spent perfecting it weren't all in vain," Baltar is saying, drawing applause. It's not universal, but broad enough to imply that he wins more than he loses by being snippy with Zarek. She doesn't think she'd have got away with it.

Lee is on the podium behind Baltar, wearing his dress uniform and a gun. He's seen her, and if he's wondering why she chose to attend, she can't blame him. He's motionless when Baltar talks about improved cooperation between the various ships and manages to work Adama's name in. Not bad, invoking his acceptance by the late Commander, and it puts Zarek in a bit of a spot.

Not the thing she'd thought she'd ever have in common with Tom Zarek, being on the wrong side of William Adama, but there they are, Baltar mentions difficult transitions and means the coup, means that he was the trusted, the sane alternative, and she wonders what she's doing here.

She should be reckless, not give a frak, tell everyone to go to hell and go on a tour around the colonies. Her mother went to Virgon, that year after the last round of Diloxin and before she got too weak to walk, on an adventure tour to the icy northern rim. So much for that.

She sits through two hours of debate and questions.

"Mr President, aren't you sending a dangerous signal by inviting a terrorist to this forum?"

"Mr Zarek, how are you going to redistribute the resources in the fleet?"

"Mr Zarek, why are you conforming to the old system by running for President?"

Her own answers are present in her mind. It's an effort not to be pleased when Baltar fumbles it, but she can't want him to fail, not against Zarek. Contempt for Zarek comes through in everything he says, and it still stings that it works for him.

"Mr President, where do you see yourself with regard to the late President Adar's agenda?"

Baltar plays with the ear piece of his glasses, taking just a moment too long to think, and that's when Billy walks up to Baltar's table and slips him a note.

She doesn't care about Baltar's answer -- "Living up to an example such as President Adar's would be challenging to any man. Or woman," he says, with a unpleasant pause before he goes on about responsibility and effort -- but there's Billy and this picture of the world moving on without her that hurts more than anything Baltar might say to distance himself from her.

She stands up with everyone else, filing out of the room in good order. There's a reception, and there's press, and she gets herself a glass of ambrosia and asks a guest from the Caprica delegation how he liked the discussion. Half an hour, she tells herself. Half an hour, two drinks, that'll be enough of not hiding.

Easy to avoid Baltar, who seems to twitch any time their eyes meet. Billy is at his side, conflicted and torn, and she smiles and nods because his work is important, she's told him so. That she misses him isn't for him to worry about.

She crosses Zarek's path when she turns away from the bar. She is always watched and he's followed with rapt attention, and there's a notable drop in conversation around them. It's an opportunity he can't pass up.

"Madam President," he says, voice dripping with respect. "I'm honoured you came by."

"Mr Zarek."

"How have you been?" he asks with a friendly smile, and it's suddenly too warm in here, too crowded.

"Fine," she says. "Not that it's any of your business." Not smooth, but if she gives him room to push she might say something worse, something spiteful and embarrassing.

Sighing, he shakes his head. "And here I was going to court your vote."

"In that case, I'll save us both some pain, so if you'll excuse me."

He steps aside generously, sending her off. It's not that Zarek has won. It's that she lost, and moments like this it's hard to tell the difference, hard not to think of Adama and his one death with a flare of resentment.

She knows she's petty and unfair, and if she came here to prove that she isn't then she's failed. That's not new either.

It's a polite, cool event. Looking around, she wonders if there was a wake for Adama. If he got drinking and tall tales and crying.

People make room for her when she goes to meet Lee, who's waiting at the edge of the room. It's brightness and attention anywhere in here, around her, but if Lee's uncomfortable when she stands next to him he's hiding it well.

She wishes they were outside. "How are you holding up?" she asks, because he looks worried and tired and because she remembers him clutching her hand so hard it hurt.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," he says, watching for her reaction and she takes a moment, a deep breath.

She's fine, she's alive for the time being and he just lost his father, but for whatever reason she hasn't been this close to cracking since she was let out of her cell on _Galactica_. "I'm not exactly enjoying myself."

He doesn't point out she didn't have to come, just nods like he knows, both why it's hard and why she couldn't stay away.

"I thought they might cancel," she says, mostly to fill the silence. "I was hoping they would."

"Because of my father?"

"Yes."

"It's an event," he says. "Gives people something to talk about besides a funeral."

"A funeral," she repeats, because that's funny somehow, so funny she has to turn away from the room and the guests, it might just all be coming apart. She had a point to coming here, and this isn't it.

Lee takes her by the elbow. "I'm sorry," he says, still here. He keeps coming back here, and if she wants to she can lean on him.

"I'm done here," she says, wiping for make-up smudges under her eyes. "I think I'd like to go now."

"That's all right," he says, standing there while she pulls herself together. Drinking and crying and tall tales squeezed between the lines, Laura Roslin revisited. But she doesn't have to be here anymore.

Lee nods once, waiting. She slips her hand into the crook of his arm. A light touch, not a statement, not for show. She's done with that, too. Time to take her leave and it's not even that hard, Lee's step next to hers towards the door. She's ready, walking away, out of the room. If she wants to she can lean on him.


End file.
